Ramblings on libraries and life upon the wicked stage

This has been a month where I haven’t really managed to read very much, and I’m not at all sure why. But what I have read has been worth reading.

Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn

Set on Fleet Street during the middle of the 20th century, this book is both highly amusing and rather sad. It shows the newspaper industry at the end of it golden years, seen through the eyes of a few characters who work in an insignificant department, responsible for dreaming up crosswords and similarly cutting-edge parts of their publication (though they, of course, believe themselves to be dynamic journalists). The characters are all deeply flawed, and Frayn draws them in such a way that you laugh at them, then are moved to feel sympathetic for them, even John Dyson, the pompous fool who is trying to make his name on television. The disastrous press trip to the Persian Gulf which takes up much of the final few chapters of the book is a masterpiece of farcical writing. An intriguing glimpse into a different time and world, this novel is decidedly worth reading.

Identity Theft by John Andrews

With the subtitle ‘Finding the missing person in you’, this is a Christian book about personal identity – both the general identity of a Christian as a child of God and individual identity. This latter aspect is welcome, as a lot of Christian writing seems to imply that we are all turned out of the same mould and should be a homogeneous mass of identikit people. This book sets out the reasons, both Biblical and otherwise, why this shouldn’t be the case, and encourages the readers to acknowledge both aspects of their identity. I found the book challenging and encouraging, and have gone back to the beginning to read it again in the hope that I’ll actually remember what’s written here and live it out.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

This month’s book group book (though yet again I missed book group night). I have seen the stage musical based on the book before and caught a mixed adaptation on television recently, but had never got round to reading it. I didn’t find it one of Dickens’ best books, to be honest, though perhaps my feelings would have been different if he had finished the story before he died. The chief problem is that the characters do not, for the most part, feel quite so vitally alive as his characters normally do. Some of them, particularly Mrs Crisparkle and Durdles, are beautifully described, but there is a spark missing. The big question of the book is this – what is the mystery? Dickens made it clear in some letters that the obvious suspect is indeed the culprit, and all the clues are laid out quite clearly (for the reader if not for any of the characters yet). So for me the mystery is how the guilty party will be brought to justice or who the disguised detective Dick Datchery really is (my money is on Bazzard, though that is again the obvious choice). The mystery could be unravelled if everyone sat down and talked to each other, as each person holds a vital clue, but the likelihood of getting such different people as Rosa Budd and Princess Puffer in the same room would be rather unlikely. Reading Dickens is never a bad thing, but there are definitely better ones out there. Oddly, leaving the novel midway doesn’t seem hugely frustrating.

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So not the most impressive list of reads this month. In terms of impact, Identity Theft has been my most valued read, but Towards the End of the Morning wins in terms of enjoyment.

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This weekend, I saw a most fascinating musical in a theatre which can only be described as quaint. The Theatre Royal, Margate, is a beautiful building, which feels like a proper old theatre, with a balcony, boxes, pillars and intricate decoration adorning many of the available surfaces. The curtain is a deep red and both stage and auditorium are raked, which tends to equal excellent sight-lines for all (although according to one cast member it also leads to muscular pains and cramps for the performers who have to walk and dance on a strange angle).

The musical itself was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on Dickens’ last, unfinished, work. Creating a musical based on a story without an ending is obviously a challenge, and Rupert Holmes (who wrote book, music and lyrics) came up with an ingenious solution – let the audience decide. As soon as proceedings reach the point where Dickens “laid down his pen for the final time”, the actors stop the story and the rest of the evening is up to the audience. They have to vote on the identity of a detective in disguise, work out who killed the title character and, in order to furnish a good old happy ending, create a pair of lovers (the latter choice being entirely the result of audience whim, as there is no real evidence for any pairing, whereas you can just about manage to invent a justification in the text for most of the potential detectives and murderers). As this was an amateur production, though, the choices were largely dictated by which characters had the most friends in the audience for any given performance.

Presented in a music hall style, there are moments when the audience is encouraged (nay, practically forced) too boo the villain and join in with one of the songs. It takes a while for the audience to warm up to this, or at least it took us a while, but it does mean that the audience participation in the choice of ending was a more organic part of the show, feeling strangely normal by that point. The music hall style also allowed for a few songs which had nothing whatsoever to do with the Dickensian plot, by presenting it as a performance by a successful music hall company. The staging of this production reinforced this, with each principal performer taking a bow when introduced, then returning to the exact stance they were in moments before, which was often very funny. It also allows for overplaying, scripted diva tantrums and deliberately bad accents. All of which could be irritating, but work in context. The style of the piece and performance were enhanced by the theatre, which is old enough to have been host to the sort of music hall we were experiencing and still maintained the ornamentation and friendliness that one would expect of such a place.

The songs are not going to become favourites of mine, even if I spend the £40 or more that a second-hand copy of the original cast recording would require in order to hear them repeatedly – it has gone out of print (both the ‘complete’ version, with all the different endings, and the reduced version) and is a relatively sought-after collectors item in certain circles. I was quite taken with ‘Don’t Quite While You’re Ahead’ (irritatingly catchy) and the patter song ‘Both Sides of the Coin’, as well as being impressed by the writing and performance of ‘No Good Can Come From Bad’, a piece which involves most of the principals at Christmas dinner, showing the various tensions and undercurrents which may or may not be responsible for the death or disappearance of Edwin Drood.

The production benefited from strong direction and musical direction, with an impressive orchestra which was of higher than normal quality for a non-professional production. The performers ranged from adequate to very good, with no horribly embarrassing performances (and believe me, I’ve seen plenty of those, both professional and amateur). The Chairman of the Music Hall Royale was portrayed by a professional, but the rest of the cast was composed of local people, most of them being completely unknown to me. I was mostly impressed by members of the supporting cast. I had gone largely in order to see one of my friends perform the role of Neville, and he did not disappoint. I also enjoyed the performances offered by the lady playing Princess Puffer, and the gentlemen in the role of the Reverend Crisparkle and Durdles. Jasper, the most-booed villain of the piece, did not really do it for me, not being quite nasty enough for my liking. Drood herself (yes, herself) was excellent in terms of acting and moving, but weaker vocally in the slower numbers. The character of Rosa annoyed me as a typically wet Dickensian love interest, so I probably did not give the actress portraying her a chance to impress me.

The lighting was effective, including liberal use of the oft-neglected footlights, and the set was a simple affair of three movable screens. The production was, however, let down by the sound. Many of the singers disappeared behind the orchestra, making me wonder whether their radio mics were at all effective or whether they simply were not singing strongly enough for the mics to pick up since all the technology can do is enhance what it is given. It was frustrating to have to strain to work out what our chosen detective and murderer were singing about, particularly when other soloists had been perfectly audible earlier on in proceedings. Sound is a very difficult thing to get right (I also had major issues with the sound in a production of Gypsy two days earlier) and is not something I have any skill with, but it is extraordinarily important to the experience of seeing a show.

It was a most enjoyable evening, and I would recommend catching any performance of the show which may crop up. It is certainly unusual, but the concept and script offer a lot of fun. I was even heard to laugh out loud several times, which has to be a good thing. The production was not perfect by any means (note that I have not mentioned choreography…), but it was a strong one with creditable performances. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is well worth investigating.